Winter gardening took on a whole new meaning for me in January. For the first time I joined a community of on-line farmers in Farmville. There I design farms and raise crops in a fantasy world where there are no bugs, no weeds, and only one dreaded disease called “withering”, and even that can be cured with a special spray or the help of a friend.

Quickly addicted to this new discovery, I started a kingdom in Castleville where I grow crops in wooden plots and fight off gloom rats that show up at every harvest.

In February I ventured outdoors leaving my fantasy world for awhile. It had been an incredibly mild winter here and the temperatures were already like spring. In the pathway near the stepping stone my reliable yellow crocus were blooming brightly.

The green leaves of my poppies surrounded them along with plenty of dead leaves that we’d somehow managed to avoid cleaning up last fall.

“It’s time,” I told my husband. “With these temperatures other things will be growing soon. We have to cut those grasses back and start cleaning up these leaves.”

My husband, who is content to live in his own fantasy world through books and television, reluctantly but obligingly dug out the leaf vac.

We have a system. I rake leaves out of the beds into a pile. He uses the leaf vac to chop up the leaves into mulch which I later spread on my flowerbeds. Most of the leaves are from oak trees. They make good mulch for the summer and they later break down, enriching the soil over time.

We are not technically seniors yet, but I don’t think our bodies know it. It took a few days with several breaks to finish the job we would have completed in half the time only a couple of years ago.

“Have you seen the crocus we planted in Ruby’s yard?” he asked after one of our breaks. Ruby had been one of our neighbors. She had since moved and a young computer specialist had bought the house.

“They look great,” he said. “Go get your camera and let’s go look at them.” So the two of us wandered into the neighbor’s yard to view our work. We had planted the bulbs there at Ruby’s request after we told her about naturalizing bulbs in the yard. The bulbs had come up every spring since then but last year they seemed fewer.

There were several clumps scattered in an area out front.

“We should have planted more,” I said. My husband nodded.

“Have you seen the ones by the driveway?” I asked. “Let’s go look at those.”

“I think you need to plant more of these,” he said. I nodded, “Yep, come fall.”